The owner of Puresheetmusic.com contacted me a time ago with the question about adding his sheet music collection to Justsheetmusic.com.

Since I take this mails very serious I always take a very close look on
the website itself and for the website Puresheetmusic.comm, I had a good look
and was astonished.

PurseSheetMusic.com

The first reason I was amazed first of all was the look of the website
which is really fresh and it has a design that is ready for the future, the website also includes all the things you expect nowadays including formatted sheet music for the iPad, Kindle, Nook and many more.

Puresheetmusic.com is also the first and leading seller of sheet music eBooks on iTunes and don’t forget Puresheetmusic.com is one of the few online sheet music shops were
you can get all the sheet music for a price as low as $1.99.

Lars Chistian Lundholm

Lars Chistian Lundholm owner of purseheetmusic.com

The Website puresheetmusic.com is run by Lars Chistian Lundholm who has 15 years’ experience as an arranger/composer and also has a degree from Berklee College Of Music in classical. He also composed music for movies and video games.

Since I had direct contact with Lars I told him I was astonished and asked him if he was willing to answer some questions for a site review about Puresheetmusic.com.

Below you will find the question and answers by Lars.

15 years experience as arranger/composer, that’s a lot of experience.What is the accomplishment you are most proud in those 15 years?

Without doubt it’s the launch of Puresheetmusic.

That said, I do and have done other things as well.
I have a degree in classical composition and my love and passion is in writing and arranging music for others to enjoy performing.

I run another project called band-charts.com specializing in arranging sheet music for cabaret shows.

I’ve had my sheet music arrangements performed in shows in Vegas, NYC, London, Sydney and on all major cruise lines and been involved in some great charity projects on Broadway.

About a decade ago I was part of the start-up of what was then called Amazing Music World.
In connection with this I spent time in Russia working with local music publishers and were among the first outsiders to lay hands on a previously unpublished piano piece by Tchaikovsky. It was published in its original form with CNN, NY Times, Financial Times and other media covering the event
as Mikhail Gorbachev joined the project as protector.

More recently my arrangements have been performed by The Czech Philharmonics and I’m this very moment finishing a show for the US Army Air Force Band.

I noticed you have a lot of experience with composing and arranging music, what is the reason you created the website?

The idea comes from a period in my life where I spent a lot of time on the road.
I’ve been blessed to have visited more than 100 countries in the name of music and to have played on all 7 continents (including the Antarctic).
However, this brought a few things to my attention.
So often I’ve had to carry 12 kilos (24 pounds) of sheet music through an empty airport or sitting in a taxi through a crowded city with piles of luggage around me while dreaming of more simple ways of doing things.
During this time I had the great pleasure of meeting so many gifted colleagues from all around the world and the conversation at night after gigs always turned to accessibility and quality of sheet music.
Sitting in a cafe in a foreign country with your laptop, having a cup of coffee while searching for sheet music that you are about to perform that evening can be challenge.
And when you finally find what you need it’s often not the quality you are looking for in the arrangement or it’s a scanned piece of sheet music that is more than 75 years old.
And it gets even more challenging. What do you do when asked to download a piece of software just to print
your sheet music, the price is very high for what you get and there is no way to transfer the file to another device while enjoying that good cup of coffee in that cafe?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could access all your sheet music on your iPad, Kindle or Nook and not have to worry about whether or not your brought a particular piece of music with you that day?
To make a long story short, this is the reason I set out to launch Puresheetmusic.com

To make good quality sheet music available for everyone free of constraints of software and complicated apps. To set the music free!

So I decided to launch a website where all sheet music is priced at $1.99 and where there are no restrictions, an “iTunes for sheet music” so to say.

I wish this to be a place where the music has been set free. A place where it doesn’t matter if you play the alto saxophone or the viola, where you are able to find unique arrangements written for your instrument knowing that these aren’t old scanned copies but newly engraved and that they are arranged by a professional composer/arranger who understand and cares for your particular needs as a musician.

When I look at your website it seems everything is ready for a sheet music website in 2012 with the social media and mobile apps, how did you made this possible?

I had a vision of this pure sheet music website where all sheet music is one low price, where aesthetics matter and I wanted to keep it as simple and as pure possible. The easy solution would have been to hire someone to do the website, set up social media relations and mobile apps implementation but at the end of the
day it goes against what Puresheetmusic means to me.

You have been one of the first and leading sellers of sheet music as ebooks on iTunes. This is a great achievement, how do you compete with the other big sheet music companies.

Well, this has completely taken me by surprise.
I am through Puresheetmusic the first and leading seller of sheet music as ebooks on iTunes and my sheet music arrangements have been:
no. 1 on the UK arts and entertainment best seller book chart,
simultaneously no. 2 and 3 in France,
simultaneously no. 2, 3 and 4 in Canada,
simultaneously no. 3 and 5 in Spain,
no. 4 in Germany,
top 20 in Australia and
top 25 in the US
and the list goes on…
Within the first 3 months of publishing sheet music on iTunes I’ve had more than 100 titles on the top 50 best selling charts around the world.

To me it proves that there is a need for pure and good quality sheet music.
iPad, Kindle, Nook and so forth are tailor made to put on a music stand in front of you.

You are one of the great sheet music websites available right now, how do you make sure it will stay that way and compete with the other big companies.

I had a vision of this pure sheet music website where all sheet music is one low price, where aesthetics matter and I wanted to keep it as simple and as pure possible. The easy solution would have been to hire someone to do the website, set up social media relations and mobile apps implementation but at the end of the
day it goes against what Puresheetmusic means to me.

I’m a real hands-on person who likes to learn new things so I sat down and learned what I needed to and did it all myself.
The next step besides constantly adding more repertoire to the website is to introduce Pure Premium titles.
It will be sheet music that includes mp3 backing tracks of the piano part and you’ll never have to be without a pianist again.

About 90% of all future sheet music titles will be available both as regular titles for 1.99 as well as Pure Premium titles.

Perhaps I’m old fashioned but I don’t believe in every unnecessary feature that modern technology makes possible.
In my eyes it takes away from the very essence of playing music if you are distracted by gimmicks wrapped in apps.
After all it’s the companionship, about being able to express your feelings through music and sharing it with others that really matter. It’s about
pure music!

My one aim is to make the sheet music available to as many music lovers as possible and this is done through accessibility.
I wish to make sure that a musician will be able to purchase pure quality sheet music no matter where he/she prefers to do their shopping and that this sheet music is formatted to his or hers preferred device when not
printed.
We touched upon iTunes earlier but I’m also making the sheet music available at Sony, Barnes & Noble, WHSmith and FNAC.

And in the immediate future I’m expanding it to Amazon, specialized websites in Japan, China, Korea and Taiwan as well as Walmart in the US.

I still don’t understand why sheet music has to be so expensive and why you need to download apps and constraining printing programs just to play music.

My sheet music will always be the very best quality, free of restrictions and priced at $1.99.

Maybe I’m idealistic and on a bit of a philanthropic mission here but I’ll compete with the other companies by setting the music free and making it available to as many music lovers as possible.

I really enjoyed this review and your answers. Since you have received the final copy of the results are you satisfied also?

Thanks hugo, I’m so very honored by this. As a website i always make sure everybody gets what he needs, if i receive a problem the first thing i do within seconds is sent a mail back.

Closing comments

Although it’s one of the first real reviews i did except for the IMSLP website (which mostly doesn’t need a explanation), I’m wondering if any of the site reviews will score any higher.

The reason behind this is that the owners of smaller web shops pay a lot of attention on the users and do everything to keep the users satisfied.
When you have a problem and ask a question you will mostly get a response immediately within a few hours and that’s also the case with PureSheetMusic.com.

I tried to order a sonata from Beethoven which i could find easily, after that i had some small problems figuring out where my shopping cart was but i was soon able to purchase it which i did trough paypal. After the final pay button in paypal i was redirected to the website with my Beethoven sonata’s ready for download. I’ve opened them and played a bit and yes this is great, the arrangement is perfect. With the whole process and testing i did I’m really sure this website deserves attention and that all for $1.99.

See our final score below.

Rating

Description

9.7

Design
The design is fresh and really looks great.

7.9

Usability
I had some small problems finding my shopping cart and removing some items from it.

10

Ordering
I have order a title trough PayPal and within seconds i was able to download it and view it perfectly.

10

Support
The websites states response will be within 24 hours. We received a response within 1 hour.

9.3

Sheet music
From the sheet music we downloaded the tune was perfect according to the song. The sheet music it self was fresh and easy to read.

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